While estate-tax opponents have held up family-owned farms and small businesses as “poster children” for the benefits of repealing the tax, such estates would be worse off, on balance, if Congress allows estate tax repeal and related tax changes to take effect on January 1, as now seems likely. The estate tax is irrelevant to the …

Today’s Senate debate over whether to extend the federal estate tax or let it expire for next year is a study in irony.
Under current law, the estate tax, which has been reduced very significantly since 2001 and now only affects the biggest 1 of every 500 estates in America, will expire next …

The House tax extender bill represents a step forward in the important effort to reinstate a pay-as-you-go norm to federal legislation — a norm that played a key role in enabling the White House and Congress to turn large deficits into substantial surpluses in the 1990s
The nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and …

In recent years Congress has greatly reduced the federal estate tax, which affects only the nation’s very largest estates, and the House should reject any effort this week to reduce it beyond its current parameters.
The country is suffering from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, with more than one in ten …

The House of Representatives this week is expected to consider permanently extending the current estate tax, under which only 1 in 500 estates face the tax and those that do pay, on average, an effective rate of less than 20 percent.
The House will vote on the Permanent Estate Tax Relief for Families, Farmers, and Small Businesses Act …

A 5.4 percent surcharge on couples with incomes over $1 million, a key financing feature of the House health reform bill, is sound and well targeted. It would affect just a fraction of 1 percent of taxpayers, a group whose incomes have soared and tax burdens have fallen in recent years, and would have only a modest impact on small businesses.
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The health reform bill that Senate leaders unveiled yesterday meets two rigorous fiscal tests: it reduces deficits over the next decade and beyond, and it puts long-term downward pressure on health care costs.
The bill would reduce deficits by an estimated $130 billion over the 2010-2019 period and by about one-quarter of one percent of GDP in the decade …

A new estate tax bill introduced by Representative Shelley Berkley (D-NV) and others would cost $91 billion more over the first decade (2012-2021) than extending the tax under its current rules as the President has proposed, yet would benefit only the nation’s wealthiest 0.2 percent of estates since they are the only ones …

A fundamental principle of the bill that the Senate Finance Committee approved today is that it is budget neutral — that is, its costs are fully offset. It pays for the costs of expanding health coverage to the uninsured by redirecting spending and tax subsidies from less productive uses elsewhere in the health sector.
Several of the offsets are …

The health reform proposal by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus would place a 35-percent excise tax on the value of health plans in excess of $8,000 for singles and $21,000 for families, starting in 2013; these thresholds would be indexed for inflation in later years. The excise tax is a sound way to help pay for health reform, but it …

Reforming the health care system to provide universal health coverage is an urgent priority. But, facing huge projected budget deficits that have the nation on an unsustainable fiscal path, the White House and Congress must enact a health reform plan that is also fully financed and that reduces the growth rate of health care …

Despite questionable reports to the contrary, repealing the estate tax would weaken the economy by adding nearly $800 billion to budget deficits over 10 years, thus reducing national saving and leaving fewer funds for investment that leads to higher productivity in the long run.
Two recent reports from the American Family Business …

If Congress rejects the President’s proposal to help pay for health care reform by limiting the value of itemized deductions for high-income filers, it should at least prevent those subsidies from expanding in 2011, as they would under current law.
Simply keeping the value of itemized deductions for filers in the top two brackets at …

Congress should consider scaling back or eliminating health care flexible spending accounts (FSAs) [1] as part of its effort to pay for health care reform. This paper, which is part of a series of papers on proposals to help pay for health reform, outlines several ways in which Congress could curtail FSAs.
FSAs are designed to allow employees to pay …

By establishing a tax on high-sugar soft drinks, Congress could help finance health care reform that extends health insurance to all Americans and slows the growth of health care costs, while also improving Americans’ health. This paper, which is part of a series of papers on proposals to help pay for health …

To help pay for health care legislation that extends health insurance to all Americans and slows the growth of health care costs, Congress should consider reversing the substantial real decline in recent decades in federal excise taxes on alcohol. This paper, which is part of a series of papers on proposals to help pay for health reform, outlines three options …

The Administration’s proposal is a welcome step forward in tax policy because it would make the tax code more balanced, support research and development, and promote fiscal responsibility.
Specifically, it would tighten lax international tax rules and …

On April 2 the Senate narrowly adopted (by a 51-48 vote) an amendment to the budget resolution by Senators Blanche Lincoln and Jon Kyl that would substantially weaken the estate tax. This proposal is both fiscally irresponsible — it would pave the way for a significant increase in …

As Congress prepares a budget resolution for fiscal year 2010, it should apply two key tests to any proposed change in the plans approved by the House and Senate Budget Committees:
Would the proposal support economic recovery in the near term?
Would …

Despite claims that President Obama would impose a massive, damaging tax increase on wealthy Americans, the top 1 percent of Americans would actually pay a slightly smaller share of their income in federal taxes under the President’s proposals than during the Clinton Administration, when the economy grew strongly.
Specifically, the top …

Critics have claimed that President Obama’s proposal to roll back tax cuts for families with incomes above $250,000 would kill job growth in the small business sector. But under the Clinton Administration, when the tax treatment of high-income families was very similar to what President Obama has proposed, small businesses …